


with a bang we reach the brink

by zoophobic



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, alex and jessica and others are mentioned but don't appear, also the operator i guess?, so i'm not tagging them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-28 15:10:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11420574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoophobic/pseuds/zoophobic
Summary: [alternatively titled, "there's no known cure for carelessness but you'd die trying to find one."]Jay wakes up in the parking lot of Rosswood with a gunshot wound in his gut, inexplicably alive.





	with a bang we reach the brink

**Author's Note:**

> OKAY additional warnings:  
> hospitals for sure, as well as some allusions/mentions of medical stuff? um. like tagged there's discussion of canonical character death although it isn't directly shown (unless you count the immediate aftermath to alex's death). honestly there's a lot of discussion of death and some (several?) allusions to trauma and stalking (although i don't think i actually... call anything stalking?).  
> also there's a bit of suspension of disbelief. actually a lot of suspension of disbelief. oh well.

 

    Jay stirs in a park.

 

    Not just any park, of course, Fate (not Fate. Fate isn’t a man in a suit with no eyes) wouldn’t let him brush Death’s fingers and promise a return at a later date in just any old park, now would it? No, Jay stirs in Rosswood Park, eyes bleary and opening towards a sky streaked with clouds. His side feels like it may as well belong to a different person and Jay can’t think without pain shooting through him. He blinks, once, twice, then drops the hand he was clutching his side with and feels pavement beneath his fingers. He can’t move, not entirely, so he just brings his hand to his face and sees the blood, drying to a dark crimson, and wonders why the hell that thing let him out of there.

 

    Jay doesn’t get to escape Death, not really. That’s Tim’s job. No, Death comes for Jay and he feels it, lingering as his shadow, so close but unable to bridge the divide between him and it. Hell, if Jay could move, he might bridge the gap himself -- this pain is more or less unbearable. Then again, he’s faced more or less unbearable things before, and always came out on the lesser side, right?

 

    That’s what he tells himself as he blinks against the sun, revealed by cloud shifting out of the way, a last blocker from his way back to life.

 

    There is a life above him in the sun’s burning rays, a death below him in the shadows he casts on the pavement, and he has been caught on the brink, unable to truly reach either.

 

    Maybe he’s reached the ark. Maybe this is the ark, this state of being, this Schrödinger’s… something. Jay wants to make a clever joke there, but all he can think as his body nurses a new kind of ache is how ironic it would be if he got to the ark before the person behind that YouTube account.

 

    This thought forces something like a smile on his face, the thought of a final act of revenge against the person in the hood. It’s probably this strange smile and the blood staining his shirt and hand that cause the scream.

 

    Suddenly there’s a man blocking out the sun, peering down at him with wide eyes and a blank face. A moment later, as the man is fumbling for his phone, a girl who is likely his daughter approaches, staring at Jay with somehow wider eyes and a horrified look.

 

    He hears the girl ask her apparent father something like, “oh God is he gonna be okay?” and her father doesn’t get a chance to answer before he’s pressing the phone to his ear. Jay can practically hear the 911 operator through the phone, and the man stammers out Rosswood Park and details that, “there’s some kid laying on the ground all bloody and-- _shit_ , please send someone I think he’s dying.”

 

    Jay brushes Death’s hand and promises a return in Benedict Hall, and he closes the door behind him in Rosswood Park’s parking lot. Or, rather, he steps through the door and that man and his daughter and the ambulance close it for him. That’s okay. The ache from the hole in his gut makes that okay. Jay doubts he would be able to close the door himself as he is loaded into the ambulance.

 

    He blacks out again somewhere on the ride. He guesses that’d be likened to passing out in Death’s front lawn.

 

    He’s passed out in other front lawns. What’s the harm in one more?

 

-

 

    Jay wakes up to the sound of a TV overhead. There are sirens blaring on it for some reason, and since it’s what his gaze darts around for and focuses on first, he notes that the news broadcast is on. As he wake up completely, he can see that he’s in a hospital room. It’s not starkly clean or anything. In fact, he bets it’s probably just a step up on the sterile scale from the various hotels he had stayed at, but it’s a hospital. It’s a hospital and he’s not dead even though his whole body aches.

 

    He had expected to return to Death sooner.

 

     But he hadn’t. Jay is alive and there are tubes in his arms and he feels so out of place. He can’t liken it to the kind of out-of-placeness he felt before, because this is a whole new type of out-of-placeness, but as the nurse steps in he figures that might be okay.

 

    He looks surprised to see Jay awake, like he’d been betting otherwise, that the skinny kid with the bullet in his gut and the bags beneath his eyes was sure to slip away at some point. Then Jay tells himself this assumption is stupid, and that not every face someone pulls is indicative of bad intentions. Then he remembers that the very person who told him this concealed a tape from him for ages, and-- and Jay cannot find the anger that he had so surely possessed when he went to Tim’s house.

 

    Regardless, the surprise on the nurse’s face is quickly replaced by a good-natured smile, and he crosses the room to Jay’s bed. Jay thinks he’s going to try to talk to him, and as the nurse checks the IV bags, he does.

 

    “Glad to see you’re awake,” the nurse says, casting a glance over his shoulder. “We were worried.”

 

     Jay has to clear his throat a few times before his voice will come to his beckon. “Yeah,” is all he can manage when it finally does, and the nurse quirks an eyebrow at this.

 

    “They- the paramedics were unable to find any identification on your person at the scene.” Jay’s head aches and he wonders if the nurse is even the one who is supposed to ask this. He knows he’s going to have to feed the nurse some kind of lie about who he is. He doesn’t even have a way to prove who he is (at least, he thinks he doesn’t) and where would they send the medical bill? “So, who are you?”

 

    Jay gives himself a minute to think. He could claim Tim’s identity. They’d more or less shared one during those months. But then he remembers that Tim had been out of work for ages, and the hotel and food had drained most of his money, and, besides, he isn’t really sure he wants to force a bill on Tim. He could claim to be Alex Kralie -- but that thought makes the hole in his abdomen ache even more, somehow. He’s fairly sure Seth Wilson has been missing for years and has been declared dead at this point, as has Brian Thomas. He can’t exactly claim to be someone who’s legally dead.

 

    Finally, Jay clears his throat again. “Don’t know,” he manages to say, and groans as he shifts his arm.

 

    The nurse is silent, though his hands have frozen at the IV bags. “So you don’t remember?” Jay doesn’t have a chance to answer before the nurse goes on, “What _do_ you remember?”

 

    Jay simply shakes his head as best he can in the hospital bed. What does he say? The only thing he can recall before waking up in Rosswood Park is approaching Benedict Hall. He’s only pretty sure it’s Alex who shot him, because who the hell else would’ve? “Don’t know,” he answers finally though it’s not much for an answer.

 

    “Oh,” the nurse murmurs, and apparently he’s done whatever he needs to do. “I’m going to tell a doctor you’re awake, okay?” The nurse disappears in a matter of moments, Jay watching him trot across the room and through the door. He settles into the bed, deciding his focus is better placed on the TV than the drab off-white walls and marked-up linoleum floors. Jay wishes he could yank the IV tubes out of his arms and run. Instead, he expends part of his limited energy tapping his nails against the side of the bed.

 

    For the first few minutes, as he is gaining cognizance of the world around him, every footstep outside the door and rustle of the tree leaves against the window (window? He didn’t know hospital rooms usually had windows, but there’s one regardless) draws his attention to it, paranoia spiking, and then he realizes it’s just a doctor or nurse or the impatient friends and family of patients or the wind outside and he finally feels his shoulders relax.

 

    Jay has never imagined he’d feel safer in a hospital room than in his own apartment, even though the sanctuary in that dingy apartment had diminished greatly after totheark had begun to get in, but here he is, relaxed in a hospital. There are actual people outside.

 

     The feeling of being relaxed is nothing if not foreign.

 

    He finds his eyes trained on the TV again, and finally manages to tune in. There’s something about him on the news channel, about how there are no reports of gunshots being heard in or near Rosswood Park and nothing to indicate he’d been dragged there, and then Jay doesn’t want to listen anymore. He can’t see the remote, though, so he just tries to bury his head into the pillow as best he can.

 

    When a doctor strides in, wrinkles lining his face and hair graying and coat swishing around his knees, he offers Jay a quick grin, then takes a seat on the side of the bed, placing his clipboard in his lap.

 

    “Can you turn the TV off?” Jay asks with a creak in his voice, and it occurs to him that this is the most coherent thing he’s said since he was shot. The doctor glances at it, places his clipboard on the bed, then stands, choosing to speak as he crosses the room and turns it off manually.

 

    He’s pretty sure the doctor is introducing himself, but whatever he says is lost upon Jay because he catches the way the TV’s screen distorts as it turns off. There’s suddenly a pounding in his ears and a ringing in his head, and the doctor must catch the way his eyes unfocus because he’s suddenly waving a hand in front of Jay’s face. He’s saying something, Jay isn’t sure what, but he tries to listen. He catches a few of the doctor’s words, and finally realizes he’s reciting whatever Jay’s predicament is in a fast-paced tone to get him to focus.

 

    It takes a few minutes, and he’s not completely in his mind again, but Jay’s there enough to hear whatever the doctor’s saying. He hears “--possible infection in--” and then the doctor notices he’s back and stops abruptly. He settles back into a perch at the edge of the hospital’s bed, offers a tense smile, and lets out a breath.

 

    “Are you alright?” the doctor asks, as though Jay isn’t laying in a hospital beds with a bullet wound in his gut and an IV in his arms.

 

    Under normal (normal isn’t the right word. Usual. Under usual) circumstances, Jay would respond with something like, “Never been better. Usually there’s two gunshot wounds.” But these are not usual circumstances and Jay doesn’t particularly feel up to that so instead he just gives the doctor as best a shrug as he can.

 

    The doctor notes this. “Silly question. I assume you know the police are on this?”

 

    “The news reporter said something, yeah.”

 

    “They tend to do that,” the doctor replies wryly, and then looks at the clipboard in his hands. “So, Rosswood Doe, you apparently don’t remember your real name. However,” he pauses, flipping the paper on the clipboard over, “there’s no evidence of trauma regarding your head with the exception of a few bruises.”

 

    Jay thinks about smashing his head against the wall behind him.

 

    “Do you mind telling me what all you remember?”

 

    Jay does mind. He does not say that to the doctor. Instead, he presses, “Rosswood Doe?”

 

    “We decided it was better than John Doe.”

 

    “Oh,” Jay says dumbly. They sit in silence for a little bit, before the doctor apparently decides Jay isn’t going to divulge any information and sighs.

 

    He picks up the clipboard and begins to talk. It’s just about what Jay’s condition was and is, why they’re keeping him, the like. Apparently, Jay would’ve died from either blood loss or shock before possible infection would’ve had a chance to set in and he had needed a blood transfusion, for which his consent could not be obtained so they went ahead and did it. The bullet hadn’t gone all the way through and they’d managed to retrieve it on their second attempt. They’re keeping an eye on him for now because the bullet tore his intestine and could very easily cause infection, and it’s at this point that Jay gives up on listening. The doctor still talks but the patient no longer hears.

 

    Instead, Jay thinks, and he finds that he finally has that clever joke he’d been searching for while bleeding out in Rosswood Park. He’s Schrödinger’s second experiment and the box has been upgraded. There is no poison, just the apparent threat of infection. He either leaves this place walking or in a bodybag, and until there is a definitive answer, he is on the brink again: simultaneously alive and dead.

 

    Unfortunately, the hospital’s lights are no sun, and the shadow they cast is no true shadow.

 

    Jay didn’t know you could exist as a theory twice in one day (then again, Jay doubted it has only been a day. He’s probably been out for several days).

 

    The doctor talks for a bit longer, and then finishes and sets the clipboard down in his lap. He watches Jay the way an anxious parent might watch a toddler walk for the first time and Jay stares back.

    Jay decides he doesn’t like hospitals very much.

 

-

 

    One day after waking up, a full twenty-four hours spent cognizant of the hospital around him, the police are allowed into Jay’s room. Just two officers -- an older woman whose hair is tucked into a bun and a younger lady who leans against the wall and doesn’t say anything to him. The woman questions him (she insists it isn’t an interrogation, but Jay thinks she’s just talking about that in the formal sense because it sure feels like one) about everything he remembers, and it’s at that point that he finally makes up a story.

 

    Jay tells her that he doesn’t recall his name, and the woman jots that down in her notepad. He goes on to explain that he was visiting the town and thought a walk through Rosswood Park might be nice (if there’s one lie he expects to be caught in, it’s that one). He says he doesn’t recall much beyond going down one of the trails, and that whoever shot him must’ve placed him in the parking lot deliberately.

 

    The officer cocks her head, asks if there’s anyone Jay could think of who’d want to hurt him (he wants to laugh at that one), and when he answers no, she frowns. She asks if he remembers anyone and he doesn’t quite know what to say to that so he just shakes his head.

 

    After a while, the time between her questions grows, and finally the older officer decides to close her notepad. The way she calls her fellow officer to her and casts a last glance at Jay as they’re leaving are enough to indicate that she doesn’t believe him.

 

-

 

    They take the IV tubes out shortly after the police leave.

 

    It’s another few days before the lack of signs of infection cause the doctor to declare Jay safe to leave.

 

    Jay (or Rosswood Doe, since he isn’t confronted for his real name again after the doctor’s initial attempt) doesn’t have insurance to speak of so he’s not exactly sure of how the medical bill is going to be handled. Still, he leaves the hospital with a hoodie and jeans and medical supplies for the still-healing, still-aching wound. He guesses he should be thankful for the change of clothes -- it was only provided because his original clothing was bloodied and it’s assumed by the hospital staff that he’ll be sleeping in a shelter that night -- but any gratitude he might have possessed is nullified by the fact that Jay has to argue for his jacket back.

 

    Still, he ends up without a bill (or one that’ll be tacked on once he’s actually pinpointed as Jay Merrick, because he more than likely isn’t out of the woods with that particular lie), new clothes, whatever it is he needs to take care of the hole in his gut, and alive. Jay thinks that payout is alright, all told.

 

    He hadn’t turned on the TV after that distortion and had eventually brushed it off as old static-y TV, but that didn’t mean sudden footsteps outside stopped bothering him, or every distant figure outside on the street who seemed a bit out of place stopped causing him to sit straight up and to wish he could bolt, or that every time he came close to dozing off he’d force himself back awake. The hospital seemed _safe_ , and perhaps the biggest loss he’d faced in his departure is that of the safety it’d seemed to provide.

 

    Jay would be back on the streets, in a worse situation than the one he’d left. No companion, no money, no car, no _camera_ . That’s the worst one, he thinks as he steps outside the hospital doors and fixes his hat on his head. He could start losing hours, days, _months_ again, and no way to tell. He doesn’t really know what to do about that.

 

    Jay hovers outside of the hospital for a minute. He left his wallet, phone, laptop, everything in his car. He hadn’t thought he’d need any of it. He’d think it a cruel irony but he’s seen cruel and it doesn’t exist in the form of some idiot with a video camera leaving any identifying objects in his unlocked car miles away from where he’s actually found.

 

    Finally, he turns, starts to walk down the road because he isn’t really sure where he’s going. It takes a while of walking, but he spots an ATM across the road and hurries to it without a second thought. He _knows_ that can’t do anything without cash, and this is the easiest legal way he can think of.

 

    Jay withdraws a hundred and doesn’t wince at the way his balance drops. He’s gotten used to it. He definitely doesn’t feel just a bit more realistically defeated.

 

    He withdraws another hundred and leaves.

 

    Jay tucks the money into his jacket pocket, and for a moment regrets choosing to keep the hoodie, because it’s nothing if not overheated. Instead of taking his jacket off, he merely adjusts his hat so it shades most of his face, and begins down the road again. He isn’t sure where he’s going.

 

    He isn’t really sure of what to do anymore.

 

-

 

    A couple weeks pass after his leaving the hospital and Jay decides he’s either running into the thing in the suit far less, or the lack of a camera has made it impossible to know when it shows up. The motel he stays at is a small, fairly dingy and cheap place (sixty dollars a night, plus an extra forty every few days on the side to take care of Jay’s lack of identification), and given it’s the cheapest he can find, he really hopes that creature doesn’t find him there.

 

    But the issue of merely not knowing is one that can be resolved -- he has no access to a phone or laptop or anything that can access the Internet as of right now, which makes it hard to do much, but he can easily walk into an electronics store with another couple hundred withdrawn from an ATM and purchase some older, cheap model of a video camera. Jay decides a couple hundred in exchange for knowing what happened in the occasional blank hours ( _days_ , once, he suspects) is a fair deal, and decides to purchase one similar to his old camera that’s just over a hundred as well as a pack of tapes.

 

    Jay pops a tape into it and hits record before he’s even left the store.

 

    He returns straight to the motel after that, where he heads to his room (it’s thankfully between two other rooms so if he ever gets a chance to yell at least there’s a chance someone might hear him) and sets the video camera up on the nightstand. He sets it just far enough away from the alarm clock to watch the time and date (7:23 in the evening, January 14th). With a sigh of something like relief, Jay slips his hat off his head and hangs it from a bedpost, setting himself up against the headboard of the bed. He wishes, for a moment, he would’ve gotten more clothes, because all he’s managed to buy since the hospital has been a plain t-shirt and another pair of shoes. But clothes can wait.

 

    Jay isn’t sure of what to do. He should return to the school, to Benedict Hall, but it seems like the mere thought of that sends a familiar shot of pain through his abdomen and he secures a hand over his wound. The initial medical supplies he’d received from the hospital had run out within the first week, so he’d had to resort to using a towel when it had reopened after a misguided walk to Rosswood Park with the intention of tracking down Jessica’s last location, complete with the sprint _away_ from Rosswood Park, which is likely how it had reopened.

 

     He’s a quick learner. He doesn’t go back to Rosswood Park after that. Not that he would’ve wanted to -- Jay doubts there is anything left there of note. Nothing left of Jessica and nothing to help him catch Alex, surely, and after their last encounter, Jay isn’t even sure he wants to do _that_ , either.

 

    No, what Jay _wants_ is to be left alone. He doesn’t want to be involved in this anymore. Of course, there are a number of issues with that. Firstly, there’s the matter of Tim, who, regardless of their last meeting, could very well be in serious danger and who Jay isn’t sure wants his help. That’s not to say Jay doesn’t pick up the phone on the nightstand several times, hold it to his ear. He only dials Tim’s number two or three times, which is quite an example of self control, and concludes that the fact that the number isn’t disconnected and that Tim actually picks up one of those calls (“Hello?” he had said, and Jay’s blood had run cold at his voice so he had slammed down the phone without saying anything at all) indicate Tim’s alive. He’s alive, and that’s enough to keep Jay from doing anything rash for a week or so.

 

    Then there’s Jessica. He has no idea what could possibly have happened to her, as nothing he’d done had led to any real results. The last evidence hinting at where she was had been the tape Tim had concealed from him (Jay tries so hard to be mad but whatever fury had driven him to Tim’s house with a knife and zip ties seems to have fallen away with his first venture to Death) and that only seemed to imply something bad had happened. Something similar to what had happened to the man Alex had killed. He has no idea what to do about that.

 

    It isn’t just Tim and Jessica, of course -- Jay has no car. He’s taken to walking places, which creates a constant pressure on the wound that Jay would trade for the ability to drive any day of the week. Still, he walks, and finds he’s spending more cash on water than he had before.

 

    But Jay has no car and no way of getting to the school (there’s always the bus route, but buses make him feel uneasy because any one of those people could be dangerous, although he tucks the idea of taking a bus under his mental “last resort” folder), meaning he doesn’t have a way to help Tim or to get Alex. That’s how he rationalizes it to himself.

 

    He can’t and so he won’t. It’s not a paranoia thing. It’s a common sense thing.

 

-

 

    Another month creeps by, incredibly tedious. There’s been a distinct lack of memory lapses or coughing fits, and the only thing that can occupy Jay’s mind is the wonder of what else that thing is occupied with.

 

    Jay ends up dividing his time between hovering uncertainly outside of locations within walking distance of the motel (some kind of doctor’s clinic similar to the one he’d met with Tim at, the hospital, even Rosswood Park’s parking lot at one point though he’d told himself he wouldn’t go back) and hiding inside either the local diner or the local library. The other patrons or passerby frequently give him odd looks, occasionally marred by some form of recognition. He had been on the news as a John Doe shot in Rosswood Park, so it’s not like he isn’t expecting some sort of strange glance but despite ages of cautious glares and wary once-overs, the sting of being looked at like an intruder is still fresh. Jay ignores them. He’s fairly certain he’d look at himself with that distinct distrust, too.

 

    The idea comes to him when he’s in the library, one hand carefully holding the camera and the other feeling the spines of the books. It comes when he spares a glance over his shoulder at the rows of computers, mostly untouched save an older man hunched over one and tapping something into the keyboard painfully slowly. They’re ancient, but he should be able to check a few things, maybe see about actually getting out of this town and out of this story for good.

 

    And then Jay’s feet lead him to the computers without conscious thought, where he settles into the one close to the door but mostly unable to be watched by fellow library-goers. He taps the mouse a few times to wake the screen up, and sinks into the plastic chair upon realizing just how old and slow these were. Jay figures, though, that he has no other option, and resigns himself to waiting.

 

    He hates waiting. He’d figured years spent waiting would make him hate it less, but he’s spent almost two months doing nothing but floating, barely tethered to anything here. He feels passive, a spectator in a narrative he’d begun, as though he is outside of himself and everything else. Jay is tired of waiting, but he wants to get out of here, find somewhere else where he can tie himself down, and so he waits.

 

    Jay pulls up the email attached to his YouTube account first, and blinks at the sight of miscellaneous emails that have come since he’d been in the hospital but have been opened, have been read.

 

    That doesn’t feel right.

 

    He checks the Marble Hornets account next, and there’s entries since the last ones he uploaded -- 78 and 79, after Tim had put up 77. There’s three, in fact, making it three entries on _his_ account that _he_ hasn’t seen.

 

    He hadn’t honestly been expecting Tim to take over the account full time. Jay had chalked Entry 77 up to a one-time thing and pushed the idea of his former companion actually picking up what he’s inadvertently put down out of his mind. The last time they’d even discussed the YouTube channel itself had been when Jay had asked if he could upload the footage the chest-mounted camera had gotten. Tim had given him a steely glare that had led Jay to believe he was about to get punched again but then Tim had looked away and said, “Yeah, fine.” Their discussion about anything other than the pursuit of Alex and Jessica had been severely limited in the first place -- the two of them had spent more time sitting in silence than actually talking and yet Tim believed Jay was either dead or missing and had chosen to keep up the channel anyway.

 

   Jay taps his nails against the monitor for a moment before finally getting up, deciding to ask the librarian for headphones. She gives him an uneasy kind of glare over her glasses as he approaches but forks over a pair regardless, instructing him to return them when he’s finished. Jay nods and returns to his computer.

 

    He sets down his video camera to the right of him, facing him and the library’s door, and then fumbles to get the headphones plugged in and secured over his ears.

 

    Jay settles into his seat to watch Entries 80, 81, and 82.

 

-

 

    Two nights after watching the entries, Jay can’t sleep.

 

    That isn’t exactly unusual for him, but it seemed to have amplified at watching the entries. He knows of several events he hadn’t before (he’d been right about Alex shooting him, Tim had been completely unconscious at the time of said shooting, he’d actually called Tim to apologize and yet that _thing_ erased it from his mind), and Jay loathes it. He hates that creature for how it affected all of them, he hates Alex for letting his need to end the spread consume him, he hates Tim for -- and with that uncomplete thought comes the realization that he doesn’t hate Tim. He’d said so himself in that phone call, hadn’t he?

 

    He shifts on the bed. The video camera is perched where it usually is on the nightstand, able to see the alarm clock without being turned away from him. The clock reads 1:57, February 17th, and given the fact that Jay has thus far been unable to sleep and that his foot won’t stop tapping against the bed, he finally leans over to the phone.

 

    Jay’s fingers hover above it for a moment before he finally picks it up and punches in Tim’s number which has become more or less muscle memory at this point. It rings a few times before Jay can hear, “This is Tim, I’m sorry I missed your call. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you.”

 

    Jay can feel his shoulders slump before he internally reminds himself that it’s nearly two AM and even if it wasn’t Tim would have no reason to pick up a phone call from a stranger. It takes him a second to realize that he could leave a voicemail, tell Tim he’s alive, let him know that he’ll contact him again when possible, anything.

 

    Instead, Jay sets the phone back down.

 

-

 

    It’s another week (February 24th. Jay starts to keep track of the days better, especially after the 19th disappears from his mind) before he decides he has to get to his car.

 

    He knows Tim has the laptop, unless he’d decided to return it to Jay’s car, which he doubts. But his phone, wallet, keys; they’re all in the glovebox. He needs his phone, even if it’s fried after that apparent day in the woods that Jay does not remember, and his wallet is sure to have cash and an ID and his credit card and he can finally stop bribing the motel owner which should put some extra money in his hands so he’ll be able to afford something other than gas station food and dollar menus. He’ll be able to actually use his car.

 

    Jay checks his mental “last resort” folder for anything that could get him back to the school, or just close enough to walk, and the answer is plain: the bus.

 

    He pulls on his jacket, fixes his hat on his head, and gets a bus schedule from the motel owner, who fixes his gaze on Jay as he hands over the sheet. “Where is it you’re heading?” he asks, and Jay considers for a moment.

 

    “Out to my old college,” he says in reply, and the owner nods as though this is enough. He still elects to watch Jay as he crosses the lobby and opens the door, evident by the way his gaze is fixed on Jay’s back even as he closes the motel door behind him.

 

    He gets on a bus outside of the diner at 11:45. The camera is rolling as he takes a seat near the back, because it’ll be some five stops before he can get off. A few more people pile on, and that’s it, the bus leaves.

 

    Jay leans his head against the window, sets his camera firmly in his lap, and waits until the scenery outside matches that near the school, ignoring the people getting on and off. There is no one dangerous. His paranoia about buses had proven to be just that: paranoia.

 

    Five stops later, Jay finds himself staring at the tops of the school’s buildings over trees, and sidles off the bus.

 

    He almost wants to run, but he doesn’t, just holding his camera steady at his side and tucking his other hand into his jacket pocket after lowering his hat. Jay walks, walks until he sees the seas of pavement that surround the campus, and takes in a deep breath. He’s not exactly sure where he parked his car, so Jay figures he’ll try to be as inconspicuous as possible until he finds it.

 

    He walks for a good twenty minutes (the campus isn’t huge but he’s moving slowly because every headache and cough makes him spin his camera all around and because he doesn’t want to strain the gunshot wound which has become a gross scarred knot but still sets him on edge) before he turns the corner of a building and there it is. It’s dusty, likely because it’s been sitting in a parking lot for nearly three months, but Jay sighs and hurries towards it.

 

    He reaches the car quickly enough, placing the camera on top of the car as he first heads for the trunk. He wrestles it open, and surely enough, there’s nothing. His laptop and case are gone. Jay fumbles with the compartment for a moment, but there’s nothing there, either, so he closes the trunk and then moves to the driver’s door. He pulls it open and grabs for the camera before sliding into the driver’s seat, shutting the door behind him.

 

     Jay sits for a minute, holding the camera. This is okay. The breath he lets out at that realization is one of relief. He sets the camera down in the seat beside him, like he would have with his old camera. Jay allows himself another moment to sink into the familiar seats, and for the first time in months, he feels like he’s more than just one piece of a completely demolished puzzle.

 

    Jay breathes.

 

    After wasting enough time like this, he leans over into the passenger’s seat, pulling open the glovebox and looking for his belongings. Sure enough, his keys are sitting atop his wallet, and with further rummaging he finds his phone beneath some miscellaneous papers. He can’t find anything else with the exception of one of Alex’s burned tapes. Jay figures he must’ve taken it out of his bag to examine and had forgotten to put it back in, so he tosses it back inside the glovebox and slams it shut.

 

    Jay thumbs through his wallet for a moment, and he finds himself almost relieved to see there’s still everything he needs -- his driver’s license, his credit card, and a few twenty dollar bills. He tucks the wallet inside his jacket pocket, then reaches for his phone.

 

    It’s dead. He wonders if he has a charger, and then remembers he’d left that in his bag, and a cursory glance in his backseat makes it very clear that it’s not in there. Jay doesn’t really remember what happened to it. It was either taken or he took it with him and left it inside one of the buildings and either way, Jay fears tracking it down will end with him back on Death’s doorstop. He resigns himself to buying a charger on the way back to town and deposits the dead phone inside the cupholder.

 

    Finally, he takes his keys, fumbling through them until he locates the one for his car and starts the vehicle up. It comes to life beautifully.

 

    “Shit,” Jay murmurs upon seeing the gas. He decides quickly enough that he’ll stop at the first gas station he sees to refill the tank and buy a charger for his phone. Still, he shifts the gear into reverse and presses on the gas, and then he’s tearing out of the parking lot and down, down, down the road out of there, until he can’t see the buildings in the rearview mirror anymore.

 

-

 

    The next entry is uploaded a week after Jay gets his car back, March 6th. He finds that out much later.

 

    Before he finds that out, though, he decides in his motel room that going back, even for his car, was something of a mistake, because now coughing fits and aches aren’t just limited to when he’s standing outside of Rosswood Park. No, Jay could barely make it back to his room on one occasion, coughing and wheezing and hacking. He finds himself wishing, after he barely crawls back into his room for the second time, that Tim were there. His lungs and head and gut sustain a constant ache, one that he isn’t sure how to handle.

 

    If Jay’s being frank, he finds himself scared to leave his motel room. It’s as though it and his car are his sole refuges, and any moment he spends beyond those two is one he spends on Death’s porch. Then he remembers that he hasn’t really given conscious thought to that metaphor in months now and tries to push it down in his brain, because he’s pretty sure that him constantly likening his situation to being Death’s ex or something would be considered unhealthy behavior.

 

    So, on March 6th, Jay does not watch Entry 83 because he is not aware it exists. In fact, Jay spends the majority of that day sitting up against the headboard of his bed, staring at a TV screen he’s too afraid to turn on with his own cell phone resting beside the camera on his nightstand.

 

    That’s the day Jay calls Tim again. He picks up the motel room’s phone without giving it real thought, brings it to his ear, and taps in his number. It rings, and rings again, and then again, and once more, and finally Tim says, “This is Tim, I’m sorry I missed--” and Jay slams the phone back down, hands shaking ever so slightly. At this point, Jay stands, moves to the small bathroom, and splashes water on his face, a feat just barely caught by the video camera recording from the night stand.

 

    Jay doesn’t turn off the water. Instead, he starts coughing, bringing his head down until his forehead rests upon the faucet and he _can’t stop coughing_.

 

    It takes a long while, but finally the pressure in his chest diminishes and Jay turns off the faucet. He returns in something like a stumble to his bed and buries his face in his hands. His shoulders shudder and he can’t seem to stop rocking. Nowhere is safe.

 

    Jay Merrick doesn’t know what to do.

 

-

 

    It takes another week (March 14th. Time moves too fast. Jay wastes entire days, basically weeks pacing the lengths of his motel room, unwilling to leave but almost equally unwilling to stay put. Not quite an immovable object meeting an unstoppable force but close enough) but Jay eventually watches Entry 83. He walks to the library, tucking his shoulders in and trying to condense himself to something unnoticeable despite the video camera in his hand.

 

    His cell phone is in his pocket. He’s pretty sure it works, or at least he thinks so; the screen is fine and he can’t see any reason why the actual calling or texting wouldn’t work anymore (unless his phone bill ran out, but he doubts that -- the bills are to go to his parents’ house and he routinely notices a chunk of money taken out of his savings). So Jay walks to the library, keeping at a slow pace. When the coughs seize him, he has to lean against the wall of some chain clothing store, securing one arm over his mouth and using the other to hold on to his camera until he feels his knuckles go white. In between coughs, Jay looks around frantically, though it takes him a moment to realize that there are other people around and that there’s _no way_ that thing would attack him in broad daylight with other people around, _right_?

 

    The coughing fit ends soon enough, and then Jay continues his trek as though nothing happened, though there’s a newfound briskness to his step.

 

    Jay reaches the library quickly, brushing open the door and heading straight to the desk. There’s a different librarian from last time, and she gives him a brief smile and a quirked eyebrow as she hands over the headphones. He takes the same seat as his last visit, sets down the camera to his right, plugs in the headphones. He slides the headphones over his ears, wakes up the computer, and within a minute or so he’s navigated to the Marble Hornets channel. He hits the newest video without a moment’s hesitation, leaning forward into his palm to watch the entry fully.

 

    In just about seven minutes (he only listens for two or three of them -- at one point he yanks off the headphones because he can’t listen to this anymore) he comes to two great truths: none of this is remotely fair and that he should be really, truly dead right about now.

 

    Jay doesn’t give himself the opportunity to rewatch it, to pore over every distortion until he’s deciphered every glitch and frame. He doesn’t want to. He closes down the tab and sets the computer to sleep, though the headphones remain plugged in. He stares at the empty black screen, reflecting his tired eyes and greasy hair and generally unkempt appearance, and then lowers his face into his palms, unsure of what to think.

 

    That was _his_ corpse. _His_ body in _Tim’s_ house, but he wasn’t dead. He wasn’t dead but that was his body and the man in the hoodie had used it against him. He couldn’t even be sure that the man in the hoodie was to blame for whatever fucked up sequence of events Tim had undergone in that video. And said man was _dead_. Real and properly dead, unless he’s going to end up like Jay, resurrected in the parking lot of Rosswood.

 

    He pulls one hand away from his face and brushes his cell phone in his pocket. Jay feels, honestly, like an idiot for not having seen it, but of course Tim’s going to blame himself for that fact that he’s apparently dead. In retrospect, Jay can’t see it going any other way. Not that that whole scene had helped (he still can’t wrap his head around it. He hadn’t been truly _dead_ , had he?), but now the need to at last call Tim and let him know that he’s alive is more or less overwhelming. Jay’s fingers brush the phone in his pocket, and the only reason he doesn’t call right there is because he’d rather not get kicked out of the library for good. So he unplugs the headphones, picks his video camera back up, and deposits the former back at the librarian’s desk and exits the building in a few long strides.

 

    Jay leans against the wall just outside of the library doors, fumbling to get his phone out of his pocket and hold the camera at the same time. He slides into a sit and sets the camera down beside him, where it captures his shoes and voice and hopefully nothing else.

 

    He spares a glance through his recent calls list, and he figures he might as well have made Tim his emergency contact before the whole getting-shot-in-Benedict Hall thing. Not that it would’ve done anything. Jay didn’t have his phone on him when Alex showed up, and that was honestly probably for the better -- he doubts Tim would’ve managed better with the knowledge that Jay was unconscious in a hospital rather than simply assuming him dead.

 

    Still, as he hits Tim’s name and hears the phone begin to ring, he can’t help but feel relieved. Jay won’t have to be alone again anymore. The phone rings again, and then again, and finally Tim picks up in the middle of the fourth ring.

 

    They’re silent for a moment and then Tim talks, catching Jay before he can think of anything to say.

 

    “I don’t know how you got this phone but you- fuck, _get rid of it_. Just- this, this isn’t funny, it’s cruel,” Tim says and there’s a tremor in his voice just before he hangs up.

 

    Jay holds the phone to his ear for a while longer, and then drops his hand abruptly, drawing his knees in closer to his chest. He debates calling again, but there was a venom in that phone call that Jay hadn’t heard Tim use since Jay got the lights knocked out of him. He doesn’t want to give up there, either. After giving himself a second to think, he decides to head back to the motel, figure out whether he’ll call again on the way there.

 

    But Jay can’t focus on the idea of calling again as he slips his phone back into his pocket and picks the video camera up. All Jay can think of is the fact that he should’ve been back with Tim for those entries, the fact that he might’ve been able to make everything go differently. For better or for worse Jay isn’t sure, but he knows he should’ve been there. He’s alive, he should’ve been.

 

    Jay spends the entirety of his slow pace back to the motel telling himself that it isn’t his fault, because what could he _possibly_ have done? It isn’t his fault.

 

     _It isn’t his fault._

 

-

 

    Jay ends up splitting most of his time between staying in his hotel room to rewatch the tapes he’s recorded since he got the new camera and driving.

 

    The tapes are boring, mostly; there are a few tapes containing footage of various distortions, as well as some proving he’s been having more memory lapses. Nothing major, not like the seven months he lost. No, it’s usually hours, the days missing are rarer, almost nonexistent. None of them have disappeared directly from his motel room, so Jay guesses it has bigger things to worry about than some not-dead pseudo detective throwing cash at some dingy motel.

 

    Jay doesn’t encounter any more footage of totheark. He guesses that means Death took a liking to the man in the hoodie and that there is no more totheark to be encountered.

 

    In terms of driving, Jay doesn’t really ever go anywhere. Sometimes he just drives around the town and other times he’ll leave. He doesn’t really have anywhere to go. He has no more leads for finding Jessica, as evidenced by the footage in Entry 82, and encountering Alex again is something Jay hopes to avoid. He’d shot him once. Jay doubts Alex would hesitate to shoot him again.

 

    Mostly he just props up the camera on the dashboard and lets it watch the sky while he talks. Jay finds there are far less distortions in the tapes filming these endeavours, possibly because the creature doesn’t want to stalk him when it knows he’ll return back to the motel and back to it.

 

    Jay doesn’t know why he keeps going back. All told, he could just leave. Go back to his parents’ house, get a job, get an apartment there and try to forget it. Jessica’s lead is dead and she very well might be too, Jay isn’t remotely willing to encounter Alex again, the man in the hoodie is dead, and the rest of the Marble Hornets cast is either dead or gone. Really, there are two things that he either can’t or shouldn’t just leave for, and that’s the threat of that thing following him and the fact that Tim thinks he’s dead.

 

    He doesn’t want to leave without Tim knowing he’s alive. Jay isn’t sure why so he pins it on an otherwise guilty conscience based on several months spent in close quarters with only one another as company and leaves his train of thought there.

 

    Jay ends up refilling his car’s tank at a gas station outside of town and then parks just in front of the ice freezers. He turns the camera on the dashboard to face him, and then reaches for his phone in the passenger’s seat.

 

    It’s March 27th, 11:38 in the morning, and Jay is calling Tim in the hope that he will pick up and Jay can explain the whole thing.

 

    He find Tim’s number and calls, hesitating just before bringing it to his ear and just barely catching the end of the first ring. The phone rings again, and then again, again, and one last time, and then, “This is Tim, I’m sorry I missed your call. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you.”

 

    Jay hesitates in the voicemail. He can’t think of anything to say and finally just takes his phone from his ear and hangs up. He tosses it back in the passenger’s seat and brings his hands to the steering wheel before resting his own forehead on it. His head seems to swim.

 

-

 

    Entry 84 is no more fair than Entry 83, and the next time Jay shows up at his motel room is two days after he watches it.

 

    He spends those two days, the 5th and 6th of April, driving, mostly -- driving out of town as though he can just leave. He can’t. Or, at least, he tells himself he can’t; the situation that thing in the suit and Alex (dear God, _Alex_ ) keep putting Tim in aren’t right and Jay needs to do _something_.

 

    He makes two more attempts to call Tim. Both attempts ring four times before going to voicemail, and both times end with Jay holding the phone away from him for a minute before ending the call. What could he say in a voicemail?

 

    It’s almost nice, knowing that his old camera is being used again. Almost nice in a way he can’t quite put words to, maybe in a bittersweet kind of way.

 

    The audition tape in Entry 84 makes him ache a different kind of ache from the bullet or the way Alex had treated him in those lost seven months. That was Alex, the Alex before any creature in a suit could make him violent, angry, desperate to finish it all Alex.

 

    Jay doesn’t like thinking about it and so he stops. He’s tried to talk Alex down, hasn’t he? He’s tried to talk Alex down and to no avail. That Alex is all but gone. Jay doubts that anything could bring that Alex back. He hates that doubt (the two of them had been _friends_ ).

 

    Jay spends two days driving, two days silent, two days doing nothing, and he can’t really stand it anymore.

 

-

 

    On May 13th, Jay is hovering in the motel lobby.

 

    He had spent the last month driving further and further away from the town, more than days away a couple times, only to return every time and collapse into his bed, usually in a fit of coughs. Jay knows he should be doing something besides floating from place to place in a state of indifference, and this knowledge pushes him to visit the college one day in that month.

 

    There’s nothing at the college. He thinks Alex is likely inside one of the buildings somewhere but Jay does not intend on finding this out for certain out of equal parts fear of getting hurt again and fear of getting entirely involved again (he’s a little lacking in forethought sometimes but that does not mean he isn’t a coward and much as Jay hates to call himself one he can think of no better word to describe himself in those moments he can’t do anything but stare blankly ahead and pull his knees close to his chest). His camera stops providing as much help as it once did -- anything the tapes get these days is more of the same boring, restless, _useless_ material Jay has subjected himself to.

 

    There is nothing at the college so Jay leaves again without getting out of his car. He returns to the motel.

 

    Nowhere is safe anymore. Jay consciously realizes this as he unlocks his motel room’s door and steps in. The distortions in the tapes are no longer limited to outside of the motel room and his car, any sporadic coughing fits and memory lapses now happen regardless of where Jay is. He guesses he should leave the motel and find somewhere else but he can’t honestly bring himself to care. Time moves in something like a blur. He goes from place to place as though on autopilot, performs the actions without thinking about them. He is outside of it all.

 

    There doesn’t seem to be a point in leaving. The thing in the suit never comes very close, almost as though it’s waiting for something.

 

    Jay doesn’t care to find out what that something is.

 

    So on May 13th, Jay is hovering in the lobby of the motel he’s stayed in for months.

 

    He and the owner are on speaking terms at this point. Jay will come downstairs in the morning and the owner will wave him over to talk about the newspaper that day or ask what he’s up to or where Jay’s been the past few days, and Jay will respond with as equal a balance between polite and stand-offish as he can manage so as to avoid inviting further discussion.

 

    The owner waves him over that morning too, and Jay approaches with as best a smile he can muster and sets his camera down on the counter. “You read the paper today?” the owner asks, setting a copy of the newspaper down before Jay.

 

    “No. Is there something weird?” Jay responds neatly. This is usually how the conversation goes.

 

    “Some poor sucker somewhere close lost his house -- arson, apparently. Happened last night, maybe the night before. Paper’s not exactly clear.” Jay thinks the motel owner goes on after this, but in the moment it takes those words to sink in, his blood runs cold and he stops listening.

 

    “Who?” Jay cuts off whatever the owner’s saying with the question and ignores the momentary dirty look the owner gives him.

 

    “Some Tom, I think… yeah, Tim. Tim Wright,” he answers, squinting at the newspaper, and then looks back at Jay. The owner’s brow furrows, mouth setting itself in a frown. The shock and disbelief and unease sinking in Jay’s stomach like cement must be clear on his face. “You know him?”

 

    “I- I, uh, I kinda do.” His voice won’t form words for a minute. “Yeah, he, um, he was one of my, uh, old friends.”

 

    “From college?” the owner asks, and Jay’s head spins too much to answer. He takes Jay’s stunned silence as a yes and shakes his head. “Shame. Paper says he’s alright. Wasn’t inside when it happened.” Jay doubts ‘alright’ covers it. “Doesn’t say where he is. You should call him or something, see how he’s holding up.” Fuck, hasn’t Jay _tried_ to do that? “I can’t imagine it. Losing your home like that.” Jay can -- that’s how his apartment went. It hits him then that with totheark dead, Alex had to have been the one who’d taken both Jay’s apartment and Tim’s house. “Takes a sick sonuvabitch to do that to someone, y’know.” Alex had been trying to kill him as early as then.

 

    “Yeah,” Jay says in a dazed voice, and the owner gives him an almost worried look.

 

    “You doing okay, kid?”

 

    Jay shakes his head, “Wh- yeah, no, I’m fine.” The owner keeps looking at him with that same almost worried expression. “I’m fine. I’m- I’ll head out for a bit. Don’t- don’t wait up or anything,” Jay repeats firmly, as though anyone ever waits up on him, and then he’s picked up his camera and turned away before the motel owner can even reply.

 

    It takes him all of one minute to get to his car and several more to get it started, the camera set up on the dashboard, and driven to what used to be Tim’s house.

 

    It’s taped up in yellow caution tape. There is more or less nothing left of the house. Jay can see the soot-stained floor, a couple of ruined walls here and there, but he doubts anything inside the house survived. He isn’t sure how he feels, but as he turns off the car and leans into the seat, the burning of his eyes and the way he can’t quite get enough breath in his lungs give him a pretty good guess.

 

    He gives himself another few minutes to mull everything over and let the pressure building up in his chest and throat subside before he reaches for the key again.

 

    The sun, hanging dully in the sky overhead, casts down shadows on him that seem closer than ever.

 

-

 

    Jay checks the library and the Marble Hornets channel again on the afternoon of May 15th.

 

    He watches Entry 85 with a sick feeling in his stomach and slides against the wall outside of the library with the same sick feeling spreading throughout his body.

 

    His gaze won’t focus on anything in the street and he can feel the dirty looks the people passing by give him and the video camera. Nothing feels real or stable. Jay digs inside the hospital-granted hoodie’s pocket for a moment and brings out his phone. His hand shakes for a minute as he powers it on, and he eventually resorts to abandoning his camera at his side to grab his wrist with his other hand in a last ditch attempt to stop shaking.

 

   He can’t focus on the screen. The world is spinning and-- and _of course_ that’s when the coughs choose to rack him.

 

    Jay coughs a shuddering kind of cough.

 

    He keeps coughing and the phone drops out of his hand and he resigns himself to waiting until this fit is over. It takes long enough, but finally the coughs die away and Jay reaches for his phone and the camera and pulls himself back to his feet. He holds the wall for a minute to steady himself and then starts walking.

 

    The shaking stops as he walks and Jay lets himself stop his trek for a moment to turn his phone on again and find Tim’s number. He dials it and starts walking again as the first ring sounds. It rings again, and then again, and Jay prepares himself for the voicemail as the last ring sounds.

 

    “This is Tim, I’m sorry I missed your call. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you.”

 

    Jay takes in a breath.

 

    “Hey, uh, Tim. I’ve been staying in a motel since-- y’know, since I got, um, since I got shot.” Fuck. Who begins a message to their former companion who believes they’re dead like _that_? “I was in the hospital for a few days, too. You, uh, you probably didn’t hear about that. It was on the news, I think.” He doesn’t feel like he’s being very coherent. “I’ve been keeping up with the entries. I tried to call you but you--” he stops and coughs, “--I think you thought it was a prank or something. I’m- I’m sorry. I should’ve gotten in touch with you. But, um, yeah, I’m not, y’know, dead.”

 

    Jay lets out a breath.

 

    “I’m staying at this motel. It’s near the library and the hospital in town. You might know it. If you, uh, if you wanna talk or something you can swing by there. My car should be in the front. Ask the motel owner for me. I’m- I’ll let him know you might come by.” His head hurts. He coughs.

 

    “I dunno. Just-- just, if you get this, even if you don’t wanna talk, call me back, please. I don’t- I haven’t really done much since I left the hospital, and I- it’s kinda pointless to do all of this alone, y’know? I, uh, I think I could help you. So, yeah, call me back or stop by the motel or something. Bye.”

 

    He turns the phone completely off after that.

 

-

 

    Jay is sitting in his motel room.

 

    That’s mostly all he’s been doing since he got back to it on the 16th. Three days have passed and all he’s done is wait.

 

    Jay doesn’t want to wait much longer.

 

-

 

    It takes another two days. It’s the 21st of May, 12:43, the alarm clock says, and Jay tells himself that if he doesn’t get some sign that Tim got his call by 1:30 he’ll go out and buy more tapes.

 

    At 12:44, the motel room’s phone rings, and Jay picks it up more or less immediately.

 

    “That guy you said might come is here,” the motel owner’s voice crackles through, and Jay hears the suspicion in his voice but is more concerned with the fact that Tim actually came. “Y’want me to send him up?”

 

    “Yeah, please,” Jay replies in a clipped tone and the owner hums as though to say something else but Jay is already smashing the phone back down on the receiver. He slides off the bed and waits, fidgeting ever so slightly. The video camera watches from the nightstand.

 

    Jay hears the footsteps outside stop at his door long before the hesitant knock.

 

    He opens it just as the knock falls away and there’s Timothy Wright, staring at him like Death had come after all and this is the aftermath. Maybe it had. Maybe this is just that. He hovers in the doorway while Jay’s hand rests hesitantly on the doorknob and neither of them say anything.

 

    Jay watches Tim for a minute, trying to figure out whether he’s about to get punched or turned away or left alone once and for all. It comes as more of a shock than anything else when Tim grabs Jay by the shoulders and pulls him in. It’s almost like a hug but not quite because this is not how two people who care about each other embrace, this is how someone who isn’t quite sure if the other is real grips them to make sure they don’t fade away. Jay feels Tim’s hands pressed into fists against his back and tries to ignore the way his knuckles dig into his skin.

 

    “You’re an asshole,” Tim says from near his ear. Jay takes too long to formulate a response and Tim notices his silence and breaks away, leaning against the doorframe and looking Jay up and down.

 

    Jay wavers for a moment. Words won’t form properly in his head.

 

    “I thought you were dead,” Tim murmurs, and then he’s running a hand through his hair and continuing, “You’re supposed to be dead.”

 

     Jay hesitates. “I’m not.”

 

    Tim gives him a cautious look, as though he still isn’t sure Jay’s real. “You’re supposed to be,” he repeats, quietly enough to make Jay doubt he was supposed to hear it. Jay doesn’t reply and Tim fumbles for the door for a minute to close it behind him. “What happened?” he asks once it’s shut and without the sounds of the hallway outside, the room seems eerily silent. Jay shifts.

 

    “I- I don’t know. I can’t remember. I know as much as you do, really, I, uh, saw Entry 80 -- Alex shot me, that thing came, and now I’m not dead.” He leans against the bed and wonders if the camera is capturing all of this.

 

    “No, I- I saw you,” Tim says as if it’ll change anything. “You were dead.”

 

    “I’m not now,” Jay repeats and the slow shake to Tim’s head makes him question that himself. He leans further against the bed, as though he might sink into it. They’re silent again, Jay trying to figure out what he’s supposed to do while Tim stares at the carpet like the answers are written upon it. “What do we do now?”

 

    Tim looks up at him sharply. “I don’t know,” he answers quietly, and then he’s studying Jay again as though he could pick up any inaccuracy in what he seems to think isn’t real. “Y- you--”

 

     “Stop,” Jay interrupts him before he can take off in another Jay Is Supposed To Be Dead jet. “I’m not dead, okay? We need--”

 

    “No,” Tim cuts him off this time. “No, it isn’t okay, because if- if you’re not, what was _that_ , Jay? What the hell did I see?”

 

    “I don’t know.”

 

    This is definitively not enough to settle him. Jay can see that. Jay has gotten used to the stifled uneasy expression Tim unintentionally wears. His gaze picks over Jay once more, and then he sighs and slides into a sit. Jay follows, pressing his back against the bed. “You said you’ve been watching the entries,” Tim mutters. “In the voicemail, I mean. So- so you saw about the audition tape, and- and everything.”

 

    “Yeah,” Jay answers, drawing his knees to his chest.

 

    “Alex was different, then,” Tim continues. “I didn’t think the way he acted over the movie was unusual for him ‘til you pointed it all out in the videos.”

 

    “Three years too late,” Jay replies quietly, and Tim looks over at him as though he’s seeing the tapestry of every single one of Jay’s mistakes for the first time. Jay supposes it’s too grand and complicated to unravel because Tim decides not to remark upon it.

 

    “I, I thought he was always like that, y’know.” Tim returns his gaze to the floor in front of him, lingering on a stain Jay hadn’t noticed before. “Irritable, I mean. Brian knew him better. I guess I thought Brian was just good at putting up with people like that. He was good at putting up with me, back then. I guess you saw how that turned out.” He barks out a bitter kind of laugh, a rough and unforgiving sound.

 

    Jay stares at his shoes. “You’re not like Alex,” he says quietly, though his mind is screaming at him for encouraging talking about Alex Kralie, because haven’t they -- hasn’t _he_ \-- wasted enough time mourning Alex Kralie? Alex had drowned over the course of Marble Hornets, and now they’re being made to drag the water for what remains.

 

    “Did- do you really think it’s because--” Tim starts, looking up to peer anxiously at Jay, who’s already shaking his head slowly in response. This is apparently not enough to quell whatever monster looms in Tim’s mind, because he swallows hard and asks, in as quiet a voice as Jay thinks possible, “How do you know?”

 

    “I don’t,” Jay answers after a pause. “It just… wouldn’t make sense.”

 

    “It would.” Tim sinks his face back into his palms, and before Jay can say anything else, he goes on, “He only got like that after the auditions. What if I introduced that thing to him?”

 

    “Stop,” Jay says again and he feels something like a broken record. “Even if you did, it wasn’t your fault he ended up a…” Jay trails off. “That he ended up the way he did. That was up to him. You didn’t, y’know, put the gun in his hand.”

 

    Tim gives him a long look, breaking away once he’s apparently gotten what he’d needed from the tense set of Jay’s shoulders and his fingers curled into the carpet. “I noticed your car was gone. I mean, not really, I, I wanted to think it was just parked somewhere differently from where I remembered, so that I wouldn’t have to face that I’d let it get stolen by some students or something, but I noticed it wasn’t where you’d left it and I just… didn’t _care_ , I guess.” Tim rambles. Jay has gotten used to this. “I’m sorry.”

 

    Jay nearly jumps at these words.

 

    Tim swallows again. “For… not caring about your car, I mean.”

 

    He doesn’t know what Tim’s looking for. “It shouldn’t be your problem,” Jay murmurs finally. “The car. You shouldn’t have to care about it.”

 

    “But I do,” Tim says immediately. “Or-- I _should’ve_ cared about the car.”

 

    “No. It wasn’t-- isn’t your problem.” Jay can hear the defensive note in his own voice and hates it.

 

    Tim hears it, too, because apparently Tim is some kind of natural when it comes to picking up on how the people around him change. “Why wouldn’t the car have been my problem?”

 

    “Because the car is fine and perfectly capable of-- the car doesn’t need you to worry about it.”

 

    “I don’t--”

 

    “No,” Jay insists, pretending not to notice the fact that this was treading dangerously close to a genuine argument, “the car was fine. You didn’t need to worry about- about the car.”

 

    Tim takes a moment and then he gets to his feet. Jay scrambles upright too, suddenly worried, because _no no no Goddamnit did he just cause the one other person who might’ve understood at this point to walk out_? Indeed, Tim turns, pulls open the door, and Jay only hesitates to grab his key and follow, slamming the door on the camera, still recording from the nightstand.

 

    “Where are you going?” Jay calls, shoving the key haphazardly into his jean pocket. Tim ignores the elevator and heads towards the steps and Jay follows, hand moving along the wall. “Tim!”

 

    Tim finally stops at the landing between the first and second floor, turning back to Jay and waiting for him to catch up. “We’re going to Benedict Hall.”

 

    There are several things wrong with that. “No.”

 

    “See?” Tim leans back against the wall, though he wavers regardless. “ _The car_ isn’t fine.”

 

    “Are you really--” Jay begins, but Tim has already started descending the stairs again, leaving Jay to hurry after him. “Yes, the car doesn’t want to go back to where- to where it was left. What if it gets left again? That’s not… reason, or whatever, to say that the car isn’t fine.”

 

    Tim ignores him as they enter the lobby and Jay can see the motel owner and whichever guest he’s tending to look up at them as they pass. He practically feels their gaze right up until the door swings shut behind him, though he only allows himself a moment of relief before he sees Tim opening the passenger door of his car and gesturing at it.

 

    “No,” Jay mutters loud enough for Tim to hear, setting his shoulders and planting his feet.

 

    “Jay,” Tim says, “C’mon. Look, fuck, I- I won’t even make you get out, or whatever. I don’t want to stay in town right now.”

 

    “Like _Benedict Hall_ is gonna be any better,” Jay attempts to sneer, but there’s a tremor in his voice that ruins it. Either Tim doesn’t notice or doesn’t want to indicate he did, because he doesn’t even shift at the slight quake.

 

    “ _Jay_ ,” Tim repeats, and though Jay wants to be as stubborn as possible and let Tim drive away and never see him again, that thought is simultaneously terrifying. It’s Jay’s fear of this (his pointed _cowardice_ ) that finally propel him forwards, and by the time he’s sliding into the passenger’s seat, Tim is already opening the driver’s door.

 

    Tim starts up the car in silence, and then they’re backing out of the parking lot and Jay almost wants to believe none of that had ever happened. “I left my camera inside,” Jay murmurs after a minute, having spotted his old camera resting on the dashboard, red light blinking its metallic, nonexistent heart out.

 

    “You weren’t on camera for, what, two minutes on our way downstairs? You’re not gonna lose two minutes or anything,” Tim reasons, tossing a glance over his shoulder at Jay.

 

    “Maybe,” Jay replies in a tone that clearly indicates he’d rather have those two minutes on film, but he drops it regardless. “Your car is freezing.”

 

    For a long minute, Tim doesn’t reply and Jay thinks he’s ignoring him but then they reach a stoplight and Tim turns in his seat to grab for something in the back. He tosses a jacket into Jay’s lap and spares Jay a look, then turns his attention back to the road. Jay shoulders the jacket on after fumbling with the seatbelt, lets out as close to a breath of relief as he sinks into it.

 

    “Thanks.”

 

    “You don’t get to keep that one,” Tim tells him and Jay can’t decide if that’s an attempt at a joke or if he’s being serious.

 

    “Noted. I’ll do my best to not get shot in it,” Jay replies, and Tim gives him another look over the armrest.

 

-

 

    Seven days later, the 28th, Tim knocks on his door again.

 

    It makes Jay jump. He’d lived in all but silence before everything and knocking on his door is still the abrupt interruption. His laptop had been given graciously back to him two days beforehand when he’d stopped at Tim’s hotel. Jay isn’t why they can’t go back to sharing a hotel room because now that another person involved knows that he’s alive, he’s gone back to paranoia at every little unordinary noise, still so afraid of being brought completely back in. He’s got one foot in the grave and one in the motel but he can’t ignore the person he’s come to regard as an ally tugging for him to return to his place six feet under the ground.

 

    Still, Jay sets aside his laptop and slides off the bed to unlock the door. Tim opens it and steps in a moment later, hurriedly closing it behind him and immediately heading for the windows, the curtains of which are slightly open. The newer camera captures this from its place on the nightstand.

 

    “What?” Jay asks, because he’s gotten used to this sort of stuff but not in the rushed, frantic way Tim is presently doing it. “Did Alex…?” he trails off. Both of them know the rest of the question.

 

    Tim takes a moment to answer, peering through the blinds before closing them and tugging the curtains shut. “No,” he finally says. Jay waits for further explanation but there is none. Tim merely stands by the chair and desk, looking as though he feels like an intruder, while Jay leans against the bed and peers back at him.

 

    It takes Jay a moment. “You’re going to the college. For Alex, this time.”

 

    “We didn’t see Alex there when we went, Jay. I think I could surprise him.”

 

    “When?”

 

    Tim doesn’t answer immediately, just bites into his lip and angles his gaze towards the door.

 

    “Okay,” Jay says, reaching to shut his laptop and grab the black jacket. He’s just picked it up when he realizes Tim has moved to the edge of the bed, wavering uncertainly. “What?”

 

    “You’re not coming.”

 

    Jay pauses for a moment, and a hopeful look crosses Tim’s face, as though this could truly deter him. “Don’t be stupid,” Jay replies finally, going back to shrugging on the jacket.

 

    “I’m not. Jay, you’re not coming with me,” Tim repeats, taking another step forward.

 

    In the moment it takes for this to sink in, Tim rests a hand on Jay’s shoulder as if to steady him before stepping away. Jay watches this and then shakes his head, mind refusing to cooperate with him beyond the beginnings to a few broken sentences. “That’s not for you to decide,” he manages finally.

 

    “You’re not.”

 

    “Yes, I am.”

 

    “No.”

 

    “ _Yes_ , Tim.”

 

    “Absolutely not.”

 

    Jay wavers before replying with a scoff, “What are you gonna do to enforce that, lock me in my own motel room? Or, wait, tie me up and leave me here?” He ignores the way Tim’s glare is intensifying. “Yeah, that worked out real well last time.”

 

    “Yeah, well, there’d be no hood-- there’s no Brian here to untie you this time, either,” Tim retorts quickly, and then says, “No. You’re staying here because I’m not going to let you die.”

 

    “That’s not--” Jay starts, stopping short. “Why do you even care so much? It’s not like we’re friends or anything.” Jay wonders if his words sound as flat and fake as they feel. “And- and even if we were, nothing’s gonna happen. I could actually help you.”

 

    Tim doesn’t answer, just looks away, moves towards the door. If Jay didn’t know better, he’d almost call the expression on Tim’s face _hurt_. Jay glances towards his camera as Tim finally says, “You’re staying here.”

 

    “No.”

 

    “I’m not arguing this anymore, Jay,” Tim mutters, and then he opens the door and steps out. Jay watches it swing shut.

 

    He waits until Tim’s footsteps die away, and then waits a few more minutes to make sure Tim wasn’t faking leaving, pressing against the door to listen. His suspicions are confirmed when he hears a sigh just down the hall outside, followed by the sound of moving away again. Jay then reaches across the bed for the camera on the nightstand, picks up his hat, and moves for the door. He opens and shuts it quietly, hurrying to the stairs.

 

    Jay reaches the lobby and waits by the entrance until he can see Tim’s car pull away from across the road, ignoring the motel owner’s call. He exits another minute or so after, huffing as he reaches his own car and tugs the door open.

 

    It doesn’t take him long to start the car up (the engine’s had trouble starting recently and so Jay silently thanks whatever possibly nonexistent force prevented this from being one of those times) and then he’s on his way to the college, camera capturing just the broad skies ahead.

 

    Jay leans into his seat, eases his tight grip on the wheel, and lets out a breath.

 

-

 

    It is May the 28th, and Jay Merrick is leaning against the wall of the staircase in Benedict Hall coughing as though he is dying.

 

    The fit is temporary. The sense of dizziness is not, though that might also be in part due to the stench of blood that’s only growing. He has to steady himself by placing a hand on the wall even as he straightens himself out, ready to proceed up the stairs.

 

    Jay takes another few steps up, one hand secured on the wall while the other films the floor. His gaze is angled similarly downwards, because he knows what’s at the top of these stairs and he is not quite up to seeing it again yet. He reaches down for the pocket knife anyway, wincing slightly at the blood on its metal and handle and then at the crimson it leaves on his hand.

 

    He folds it back up and shoves it inside his jacket pocket anyway, wiping his hand on his jeans.

 

    Jay stops again at Tim, hesitating slightly before kneeling at his side and gently shaking his shoulder. “Tim,” he murmurs, though Tim appears completely gone and Jay can’t tell what the absence of breath in his own chest means. “C’mon, Tim. _Tim_.”

 

    There is no response and Jay rolls back to sit on his heels, setting down the newer camera. His old camera is still resting on the landing and he has half a mind to go back down for it but Tim may or may not be dead and he decides that isn’t an immediate priority.

 

    He’d been pushed into attending maybe two of those emergency medical response classes and had never been remotely good at it, but he knows where a pulse should be and ends up pressing two fingers against Tim’s neck.

 

    He’s alive.

 

    Jay bites his lip, tries to remember those classes for a moment, fails to come up with anything. He hesitates again and then gets to his feet, leaving the camera on the floor as he steps over it and moves towards the room behind them, where the scent of iron seems to be strongest.

 

    Jay sees the blood on the floor and knows this is where Alex Kralie returned to Death’s unloving embrace in Jay’s stead.

 

    He more or less stumbles back out, head too muddled with everything that he’s trying to piece together to respond properly (the knife was bloody. Alex died by Jay’s knife in Tim’s hand. He doesn’t want to think like that). Jay allows himself a moment to get enough air in his lungs before returning to Tim’s side and to the camera, sliding into a sitting position on the stairs.

 

    Jay does indeed give Tim another shake, even yells a bit before he finally stops, shaking slightly. He buries his face in his hands, trying very hard not to let the pressure in his chest and throat and head block everything else out.

 

    Jay does not do a very good job of that.

 

-

 

    It’s June 15th when Tim tells him Entry 86 is being uploaded.

 

    “Is that gonna be the last one?” Jay asks, looking up from the old camera he’d been turning over in his hands. They’re sharing a hotel room, now, just outside of town, as far away from Benedict Hall and Rosswood Park and the hospital and _everything_ as they could get.

 

    Tim turns to look back at him from the laptop, seated at the desk in the room. “Probably not,” he answers, pushing himself and the chair back away from the desk. “I wanna, y’know, tell them that Jessica’s alive. Say that it’s all okay.”

 

    The immediate question (is it _really_ all okay?) is at the tip of Jay’s tongue, but he bites it down to prevent himself from asking it. Instead, he murmurs, “How is Jessica?”

 

    Tim shrugs, though his expression seems to be one of relief that Jay isn’t asking to visit her anymore. “Good, I think. She’s learning about how to deal with it now.” He gives Jay a long look, then clears his throat and looks away, focusing instead on the door. “I wish you’d actually try, too.”

 

    Jay shifts, straightening himself up against the back of the bed. He thinks. “I will,” he promises quietly, and there’s a moment in which Tim looks back at him as though some great big weight has been lifted off his back.

 

    Tim turns back around in the chair to check the upload progress.

 

    “Do you think it’s gonna stop here?”

 

    Tim is silent for a moment and Jay wonders if he’s going to ignore the question. “No,” he answers finally, and Jay closes his eyes as though he might sink beneath the rising tide at any second. “But we’ll be able to ward it off now. And there’s no Alex or Brian or anyone who’s going to prevent that or bring it back or something.”

 

    Jay swallows. “It wasn’t one of them, though. I was the one who started watching the tapes.”

 

    Tim snorts, refusing to turn back to Jay. “And I’m the source. And you saw Amy pick up the camera and capture that thing. And--” Tim stops, shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. This battle’s over.” Jay thinks he says something else, softly enough that Jay can barely hear it, but it sounds almost like, “And we won.”

 

    Jay doesn’t reply. He doesn’t know if this is winning.

 

-

 

    Four days later (June 19th), Tim shows Jay the raw footage for the last video.

 

    “I’m gonna edit it and upload it tomorrow, maybe,” he says as it ends on Tim arriving back at the hotel, and Jay closes the window.

 

    “Sounds good,” Jay replies, rolling the chair away from the desk and getting up to let Tim put the laptop to sleep. The screen goes black and Jay can see his and Tim’s reflections in it for all of a minute. They look so incredibly _tired_ , though maybe Tim’s reflection is a bit wary but hopeful and Jay’s might be a bit anxious but relieved.

 

    Tim closes the laptop as Jay reaches for his new camera, sitting by the laptop. “She’s fine, Jay. You didn’t get her killed. She’s safe and dealing with it,” he says, and there’s something alleviating about the fact Tim can so easily pinpoint the one of the sources of the stress on Jay’s face. “She said so herself.”

 

    “Yeah, but…” Jay’s words trail away. They both know his response and they both know there is nothing anyone can say to alleviate that guilt. Jay chooses to change the subject, moving to his bed. “I’m glad you got rid of it. The mask.”

 

    Tim zips the laptop bag closed and hands it over to Jay, who accepts it and holds it in his hand for a minute as though weighing it and all of it’s footage. “I am too,” Tim mutters quickly, watching Jay set it carefully on top of the clothes in his duffel and close the bag.

 

     “Have you figured out where you’ll go?” Jay asks as he places the camera on the bed to sling the duffel he’d recently purchased over his shoulder. The bag is light -- he only has a few items of clothing and the heaviest thing in it is likely the laptop. He picks the camera back up and looks over to see Tim seated on the edge of the bed, appearing deep in thought.

 

    “No,” Tim says at last. “Just… away from here. Maybe I’ll go out to Utah, make a living farming… cattle, or something,” he continues, picking up his own bag and heading for the door. He rests a hand on top of it and glances back at Jay. “Ready to go?”

 

    “Sure,” Jay answers, though his mind is lingering on the cattle farming in Utah bit. He closes the door behind him softly so as to not make either of them jump as he says, “I don’t think they farm a lot of cattle in Utah.”

 

    Tim hums. “Okay, so I’ll make it the new big industry there.” They head for the elevator, Jay fumbling with one hand to open his duffel back up and dig for his hat. He has to shift the laptop to find it, crushed between the case and his hoodie. “Or maybe, uh, up to New England. Not New York, though. New York seems too crowded, y’know?”

 

     The elevator doors slide shut and Jay ignores the feeling of being trapped. “I was in NYC, once. Back the summer before college,” Jay tells him as Tim hits the ground floor button. “It is. Crowded, I mean. Felt like I couldn’t breathe.” Jay slides the hat over his hair.

 

    The groan of the elevator as it moves inspires the same restlessness in Jay as it always does, and Tim spares him an almost worried glance and rests a hand on his shoulder as if he knows this. “I’ll make sure never to go to New York City, then,” Tim says, leaning back against the railing. “Maybe Pennsylvania. Or Maine. I’ll become a fisherman.”

 

    “Maine and Pennsylvania aren’t even a little bit in the same place,” Jay informs him wryly, and Tim shoots him a fake dirty look. “Like, I guess they’re both in New England, but Maine’s pretty much the northernmost state and Pennsylvania’s, well, Pennsylvania.”

 

    “Have you ever been to Pennsylvania?” Tim asks, quirking an eyebrow. At Jay’s silence, “I didn’t think so.” The elevator stops and the doors slide open, revealing a couple ready to get on. Tim and Jay step out before them, and they cast an inquisitive look at the camera in Jay’s hands as they pass.

 

    “Is it stupid to still carry this thing around?” The question lingers in Jay’s mind as the elevator doors slide shut behind the two of them. He taps the camera with his free hand as though what he was talking about wasn’t incredibly clear.

 

    Tim eyes the camera, then shakes his head. “I don’t think so, not if you think it _helps_ ,” he replies. “I’m gonna go check us out. Wait here.”

 

    And so Jay does, filming the lobby and pointedly avoiding the hotel patrons, quite a few of which let their gazes hover on Jay and his camera far longer than necessary.

 

    They’re walking outside, keycards left at the hotel desk, when Tim mentions the topic again. “Alaska,” he says simply, and then at Jay’s confused glance, “That’s the most northern state. I’ll go to Alaska and live it up.”

 

    “I’m willing to bet that you ‘living it up’ is gonna be really cold,” Jay replies as he adjusts the duffel on his shoulder.

 

    “Yeah, you’d probably win that bet.” They walk to Tim’s car. Jay blinks up against the sun, pulling his hat back to fully let it consume him and it hits him that he feels so much more warmed by it now than he has in a long while.

 

    Tim crosses to the trunk of his car and opens it, tossing his duffel inside without further thought. He lets it fall shut and rests his hands on the edge, and Jay watches him linger there for a minute, closing his eyes and letting out a breath. Jay feels privy to an oddly telling moment, and then the moment is over and Tim is circling his car back to the driver’s door. He opens the door but doesn’t get in, instead looking back at Jay and furrowing his brow as though there is something wrong with this picture.

 

    “You coming?” Tim asks finally and maybe that’s something akin to genuine caring in the way his gaze meets Jay’s.

 

    “Yeah, gimme a second,” Jay says, and then he stops recording.

**Author's Note:**

> WHOO ok uh. i wrote half of this the night after i finished mh for the first time (about... 10pm-4am?) and the other half was written at variously intervals usually... late at night so if this is a bit of a mess that's likely why lol. this was beta read when i was a little more than halfway done (so... that's not really beta reading i guess) meaning that the rest of it was edited by me. if you spot a typo or something let me know and i'll fix it.  
> ON A SIMILAR NOTE if i should add a tag or something or you feel one doesn't apply feel free to tell me !  
> uh. jay gets away with a lot of Shit in this fic that i mostly rationalize because it is supposed to be written from his perspective but he still does a lot of Shit. if you know what i mean.  
> um... i don't really have much else to say? just, y'know, thank you for reading and i hope you enjoyed! this was the um. first piece i did for mh so it's probably out of character and doesn't match the tone of the series but [shrug emoji]  
> thanks again for reading and any kudos/comments are much, much obliged !!!


End file.
